Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (6 page)

No doubt the date proceeded like most of the
others, with Dayton starting things off by drinking vodka and
orange juice to put himself in the mood and to deaden his date's
mental faculties. They also likely drove around town as a prelude
to leaving the city. But for some reason, Dayton didn't take Jenny
to the Molalla forest.

She might have persuaded him not to go there
because of the extra time it would take. To Jenny, time was money.
Or maybe Dayton hadn't yet worked up to the point of telling her
about his forest hideaway, his torture chamber in a natural
setting. It was even possible that he had done something to make
her feel ill at ease and that she somehow convinced him she would
do whatever he wanted as long as they remained in town. Whatever
the reason was that they didn't go to Molalla, Jenny Smith, unlike
some of the other women who had lived to talk about their
experiences with Dayton, would not survive the night. Jenny would
join the others, the ranks of the dead, on whom he had so
fiendishly acted out his fantasies, victims that even the police
didn't know about yet.

Exactly where they went and what they did
during the first hour and half of their date was never firmly
established. No one, except for Dayton and Jenny, knew the precise
details of what happened between them from 1:30 to 3 A.M. Since he
won't talk and the dead tell no tales, those facts may never be
known. What is known is how Dayton Leroy Rogers violently murdered
Jenny Smith early that summer morning.

It was only minutes before 3 A.M. when they
pulled into the parking lot of a small business complex at 16239
Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard in Oak Grove, a Clackamas County
suburb of Portland. Safeco Insurance and a recently vacated
building sat on one side of the tree-lined parking lot, and the
Portland branch of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC)
and a Denny's restaurant occupied the other side.

Dayton parked near the front of the GMAC
building, which was close to the rear of the parking lot. He had
been to that location many times before and knew that it was the
darkest area of the parking lot. He would have his privacy there,
at least until Jenny began to scream.

Dayton promptly convinced Jenny that it was
time to get started. In apparent agreement, she slipped off all of
her clothes. Unable to find any bindings of his own, Dayton bound
her hands together with a restraint he fashioned out of the laces
of Jenny's tennis shoes, leaving her legs free. It wasn't the way
he liked it, but it would have to do. Kneeling on the floor of the
pickup's cab, with her upper torso resting on the seat, she waited
there, nude, for his next move. She was nearly helpless, his alone
to do with what he pleased.

With little or no warning, Dayton, unable to
control himself any longer, reached over and removed a kitchen
knife from the glove compartment. Jenny, curious, struggled to
position her head where she could see what he was doing. When she
saw the knife and the viciousness in his eyes, she began to scream.
His mask was off, his dark side no longer suppressed. He was poised
there, momentarily still, like a black mamba ready to strike again
and again until its victim succumbed to its fervent attack.

He enjoyed her wild display of fear, and it
quickly elevated his bloodlust to near fever pitch. Jenny's screams
were barely audible outside the pickup at first, because he had
closed the windows as a precautionary measure before tying her up.
Still, he had to move fast, then get out of there. The parking lot
wasn't like the Molalla forest. People would soon respond to
Jenny's screams.

At first Dayton maintained a calculated level
of control over his actions. He made an incision on Jenny's back;
then, after she wrenched her body around, he made a deeper cut on
the nipple of one of her breasts. Jenny threw her head back and
screamed a guttural cry of terror and pain. Dayton knew there would
be no masturbating this time. Jenny was making too much noise, and
he couldn't take his time like he could in the forest. Instead, he
entered her fiercely, not with his penis but with the knife. His
body rigid, his fists clenched, Dayton came to life in the
flesh-and-blood nightmare he had created for Jenny. Jenny's pain
was tremendous, and her blood soon began to flow freely. The more
she struggled, the wilder and less controlled he became. She
squirmed and twisted with each slash, and the shoelaces binding her
nearly cut into her wrists. Jenny became hysterical, and would soon
welcome death as her only release from this monster's madness.

Elated and delirious, Dayton plunged the
blade into her body again. He withdrew it slowly, deriving intense
pleasure from prolonging Jenny's agony. He began to shriek with
ecstasy as she continued to squirm and kick wildly, pleading for
her life, her screams somehow seeming eternal. The sight of her
blood brought on an erection, the most firm he'd ever had. God, how
he desperately wanted to masturbate, but there just wasn't enough
time. At any moment someone could come running to her rescue.
Laughing maniacally, he rammed the knife into her torso again,
pulled it out only to push it in again. It felt wonderful to him as
the steel blade passed through Jenny's flesh and sinewy tissue,
occasionally striking vital organs and bone. He repeated the
process over and over, in his mind erotically, until he felt as if
his penis would explode.

Suddenly the laces gave way to the tremendous
force of her struggling and Jenny felt a brief moment of freedom.
Dayton, realizing that her bindings had come undone, lost what
little control he had left and began stabbing her more savagely, if
that was possible. He wouldn't let her get away; he couldn't, not
now. He had hurt her too badly, and to let her go would most
certainly place his freedom in jeopardy. He had to finish her off.
There was just no other solution. Besides, the bitch, through her
attempt at escape, had rejected him and she deserved to die. He
hated her now, just as he hated all women, almost as much as he
hated his own mother. Jenny was no different from any of the
others. He had been a fool to think that she had been.

As Dayton shivered with angry ecstasy, Jenny
continued to try and fend off the knife. Despite the severity of
her wounds she managed somehow to reach over with one hand and open
the passenger door. She fell out onto the pavement.

Bleeding profusely from her wounds, she began
to run in a feeble attempt to escape the madman, to find someone,
anyone, who could help her. However, after she gained only a few
yards, Dayton, close behind, lunged at her and grabbed her by the
neck. Her arms flailing wildly, he brought her down to the asphalt.
Jenny continued to scream because that was all that she could do,
and her shrieks were no longer muffled. Dayton, hovering over her,
raised the knife, its shiny blade reflecting the brilliance of the
parking lot's overhead lights. Jenny tried to fight with her hands
as he brought the blade down again and again. But it was no use.
She was too weak to fight him off. Her attempts to fend off the
knife became more automatic, instinctive, no longer a cognizant
effort to survive. She slipped into unconsciousness, and her body
fell limp.

Although Dayton had chosen the darkest area
of the parking lot, it was adjacent to an all-night establishment,
the Denny's restaurant. The taverns and bars had just closed half
an hour earlier, and the Denny's business was brisk. It was the
only restaurant open in the area at that time of the morning, and
customers came and went almost nonstop.

James Virgil Dahlke, three days shy of his
fifty-first birthday, had arrived at Denny's at about the same time
that Jenny Smith had fallen out of Dayton Leroy Rogers's truck.
Clad in a blue nylon jacket, green plaid shirt, and blue jeans, the
mustachioed man with longer than usual sideburns and short brown
hair was alone as he parked his 1983 Ford two-tone blue van on the
side of the building closest to McLoughlin Boulevard. When he got
out and began walking toward the restaurant, he heard Jenny
hollering and screaming. Although he couldn't quite make out what
she was saying, if anything, Dahlke could see two human forms in
the GMAC parking lot, the direction from which the screams had
come. He adjusted his wire-framed glasses, hoping to get a better
look at what the commotion was all about.

About that time Kurt Thielke, thirty-three,
walked out of Denny's and headed toward his brown 1966 Dodge van,
parked in front of the restaurant just west of the front door.
Thielke heard the screams, too, and saw the two people in the GMAC
parking lot. He also heard what he thought was a muffled yell. Then
he saw Jenny. Although his view was somewhat obscured by the parked
cars, he saw that her arms were held out and up, and it looked like
she was trying to get away from the man who by now held her by her
neck from behind. That was when Dayton and Jenny went down, out of
sight. At first Thielke thought that the man was trying to control
a woman high on drugs, or perhaps who was deranged. But then he
heard her pleas for help and knew that he had to do something.

"Help me! Please help me! Rape! I'm being
raped!" Jenny's screams were wild and high-pitched, the result of
extreme physical pain. It was difficult, in the darkness, to see
precisely what was happening. Dahlke and Thielke briefly exchanged
glances, as if questioning each other about what they should
do.

"Let's see what that is. Let's check it out,"
said Dahlke, leading the way and shouting for Thielke to follow him
toward the sound of the screams. By the time they reached the
couple, Dahlke and Thielke saw that Jenny was naked, lying on her
back, and that Dayton was now on top of her, face-to-face. Dayton
was lying in between her legs, in a position that made it appear he
was having, or at least trying to have, sex with her.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing?"
shouted Dahlke at the complete stranger in stunned disbelief. In
all of his nearly fifty-one years he had never witnessed such an
outrageous, blatant display of violence against another human
being. When he realized how serious the situation was, he hoped
that he would never witness such an episode again.

Upon hearing Dahlke's words, Dayton looked up
and lifted his upper body with his arms. He got off Jenny, then ran
around the west end of the GMAC building. Thielke considered going
after him but, after observing what he thought was a knife in the
fleeing man's hand, decided against it.

When Dahlke reached Jenny, he was both
sickened and stunned. Blood gushed from a hole in her neck, and she
was making coughing sounds. She had also sustained wounds to her
abdomen, from which blood slowly oozed. Although Dahlke felt a
breeze of air from her lungs, Jenny no longer appeared conscious.
He shouted for Thielke to get help, and remained with Jenny.
Thielke ran inside the restaurant.

"Somebody call nine-one-one! A lady has been
raped out there!"

Stan Conner, twenty-one, looked up from his
table to see what the fuss was about. So did Richard Bergio,
twenty-four, and Charles Gates, twenty-three. Each left his
separate table and rushed outside. When Gates, a handicapped man in
a wheelchair, reached Jenny, he was overcome with emotion.

"My God!" he exclaimed. "Her throat has been
slit!" Experienced in first aid and emergency medical treatment,
Gates, undaunted by all the blood, fell forward from his wheelchair
and onto his knees. He had to try and help her. He felt her carotid
artery to see if there was a pulse, but found none. Jenny would not
respond to his questions, and she was not breathing. Gates
immediately began CPR, while Dahlke placed pressure on Jenny's
wounds. Although sickened and revulsed at the carnage, Gates was
relentless in his efforts to try to save Jenny, a complete stranger
to himself and everyone else who was present.

As a crowd gathered, Richard Bergio ran back
inside the restaurant to make certain that someone had called for
medical and police assistance. When he returned to the parking lot,
he found that Gates's gallant attempts had not revived the woman.
When he looked closer, he lost what little hope he had that she
would survive. She had far too many wounds on her upper torso.

While everyone was trying to save Jenny's
life, Dayton Rogers was seen going around the side of the GMAC
building. He wasn't running, and he wasn't walking, but sort of
loped along the sidewalk, occasionally stopping long enough to see
if anyone was following him. No one was, but in an apparent move to
elude those he now knew were watching him from a safe distance, he
scaled a short flight of stairs, apparently to see if they would
lead him away from the ever-growing crowd. Starkly aware that they
didn't provide a safe haven or even a place to hide, he went down
the other side and walked toward his pickup. Surprisingly, he still
did not seem in a hurry to those watching him.

"That's him!" someone shouted, as if to alert
the many sets of eyes that were already focused on Dayton as he
climbed into his truck. "That's the son-of-a-motherfucker! Somebody
get his license plate number!" But the poor lighting condition made
it impossible for anyone to read the license plate.

Dayton backed his truck, which had been
parked facing the front of the GMAC building, fast, lights out,
nearly hitting a red car parked behind it. He then sped away, west
through the parking lot toward an apartment complex, and down a
narrow gravel lane. The lane was a dead end, however, and Dayton
was forced to turn his truck around and go back the way he had
come.

By that time Stan Conner and Richard Bergio
were inside their own vehicles, which they moved to the parking
lot's exits. Positioning their automobiles lengthwise across the
exits, both thought that they had adequately blocked off the
parking lot so that the man driving the "straight-looking" pickup
could not escape. But Dayton surprised them. Traveling at a high
rate of speed, he turned on his lights and bounced over onto the
sidewalk and went around them, nearly striking Conner's car. He
fled south on McLoughlin Boulevard.